GregD

This never ending slog of a week continues.....why is it only Tuesday? At least there is some good news on the horizon. I got two emails from Derick today. He reached out with some requests to help with the cakes, so that's a start. He also sent our preliminary dining schedule, and I am happy to report that my ill timed Izumi reservation has been moved, and he incorporated all of our other dining requests, as I knew he would. I might even start packing tomorrow and keep the boss happy by not doing it late Friday night. I never see the problem since it takes be about 10 minutes. I hope everyone enjoys their Valentines Day with their SO etc, or your Anti Valentines Day if that is your thing too! 114 hours 12 minutes until boarding!! (10:30 on Sunday)

yes, assuming you are more than 90 days away from the departure date you would be able to change with only the $100pp change fee.

Now if we can only figure out a way to flip this relationship!

Sitting at the firehouse today and I got to thinking. I need to reach out to a theoretical physicist to study the inverse relationship between perceived time during the week before a cruise, and the week actually spent on the cruise....... I need to make it through todays shift, and one more on Thursday and I'm on vacation.

I too said to the boss that we could be very comfortable in sky class......it didn't go so well though... Actual footage....

Funny side note..Three of us from my firehouse are all cruising RC next week, all on different ships. I'm on Oasis, one of the Captains is on Wonder, and my Fire Chief will be on Anthem, so you will cross paths so to speak with his family! They all have said I need to be a travel agent since they have been asking me so many questions.....hmmmmm, retirement side hustle maybe

Whoops, that should have said 60 days out

Good luck with that! Hopefully all the kinks are worked out by then.

The kids too!!

I agree that 5hrs is not worth it. Timing does sound correct though will probably be even less time at Atlantis. The ship docks at 1, and will take some time to clear before passengers are cleared to leave. If your ticket says 2pm, and that is the meeting time, there will still be time spent to organize all the passengers, collect tickets, board busses etc. I've been to Atlantis twice, and the time spent on the pier prior to boarding busses has been at least 30 minutes each time. Once you actually get to the resort, it's a good 10+ minute walk to actually get to the water park area. I would bet its 3pm by the time you have butts in seats. The bus drivers will show you where to meet them for the return trip, and will say when the last bus departs, which will probably be 7pm, so you would need to start packing up and moving to that location at about 6:30. Will all of those little time subtractions you would probably have 3.5hrs at best to do slides etc, and that's assuming everything went super fast.

be de deee dooooo......(Sorry, I cannot use this meme without singing/typing the rest of that riff) We are one week from our wheels up. The endless stream of Amazon packages that are arriving daily as The Boss remembers something else that she forgot she needed is probably driving our mailman nuts. We took advantage of the free laundry services to great success while in Norway, and I plan on doing the same this coming week that I plan on packing WAAY less clothes, but The Boss, I can't convince her otherwise. I almost think each cruise, the luggage gets heavier and heavier. Side note, anyone have experience with solgaard luggage? I've been debating upgrading our soft sided luggage. Travel plans. Last year we road tripped the whole way to Miami from NY because flights were stupid money. This year, they aren't as bad, but still crazy. We decided to drive to BWI and fly from there. It's a relatively easy drive from our house, and cut the cost of the flights significantly. We will arrive in Miami Saturday night and we chose to stay at The Homewood Suites Blue Lagoon by the airport. We like this brand of hotels, and this one has 2 bedroom units. We are going to stay here one night after the cruise too and fly home on Monday.

Be nice to her. I'm sailing on Oasis the week after you!

I am so looking forward to walking into the Diamond Lounge for the first time next week with my kids. We all earned our points, including my kids, and I have zero "F's" to give. I will have no problem telling someone how unimportant they are! I've watched too many pinnacles berate crew members to stay quiet.

Genie Stuff: At exactly 90 days out, we did get our genie survey. For my neighbourly (neighborly?) cruise with @Lovetocruise2002 this past summer, I had saved everything in a word document, so it was easy to update and tweak for this sailing. I did put in the notes that we would love to work with Derick again since we had him last year. The kids really liked him. At 30 days out we got our welcome letter, and we were thrilled to find that it was from Derick! The kids were so happy. I sent out an email with life updates, and we have had a few more back and forth emails regarding scheduling etc. Here are some of our requests, I'll keep everyone posted on how they come out. I pre-booked Izumi hibachi in the cruise planner quite a while ago knowing that is the new norm. But like an idiot, I accidentally booked it for formal night. I've asked Derick if he could switch it to a different night for us. I got the canned "I can't promise anything" response, so we will see what happens. After reading some other posts, we requested Cabana #43 in Thrill Water Park. I was surprised to get a "you got it" response. It seems to be in a good spot, close to the slides as well as the attendant station. We are there at the same time as Freedom, so I anticipate the park being super busy. I'm already looking forward to the chicken sammich hack! Dining wise, we are skipping chefs table and CP150. While I would like the meal at Chefs Table, the rest of the gang wouldn't. Most of our group weren't impressed by CP150 either. I may have to make some requests for their bread and the fillet at some point, because those were REALLY good. Night 1 will be in CK because fillet night. We also asked Derick that we wanted to get to Portside BBQ sooner in the cruise. Last year when we finally made it there, we were in full on Star Class food coma status and really couldn't enjoy it. I would also like to get to Playmakers. We have not eaten there yet. We are going to surprise the kids with a birthday party for them on the cruise. Lydia became a teenager a month ago, and Johnny turns 10 a couple weeks after the cruise, so why not. Johnny is obsessed with hippopotamuses and Lydia is a competitive cheerleader. I asked for cakes in those themes. I did tell Derick I fully understand that there are limitations that the pastry team have, but there is no harm in asking right?

We loved watching it last year from the balcony! We will be watching it from there as many times as well this cruise too!

More pre-cruise stuff. Last year on Oasis we sailed while everything was still at reduced capacity and the ship had about 3500 guests on board. While it was nice to not have any lines, the ship felt dead. This will be our first Oasis class at full capacity, so it will be great to see the ship come alive. I'm going to channel my inner @Ampurp85and do some good people watching. We crossed the points threshold and now are diamond status. I plan on chatting with the Loyalty Ambassador to make sure we take full advantage of our perks. Granted the drink vouchers aren't in play here, but I'll check out the diamond lounge, get our free photos etc etc. Any suggestions, throw them out there. I don't know if it's just me or not. Does anyone else have flashbacks, or a nostalgia moment when you're out and about and The Power of Love comes on the radio, and you are brought back to the opening of Aqua80? (now excuse me while I pull up Youtube and watch the music video)

This could be interesting. Instead of "cruise fare" pricing, everything is just labeled a "compulsory gratuity" Sit back and watch everyones head explode..

Starting my awkward this guy can't dance single digit dance today! (actual footage of me dancing, that's me on the left)

As I type this we are 9 days 15 hours 49 minutes away from boarding, so I suppose I should get this blog started! As you can see in the tags, we are returning to Oasis of the Seas, this time an Eastern Caribbean route. We are star class again in an Aquatheater Suite. We were on Oasis last February doing the western route in the ATS2BR. We are excited to go the Eastern route, as this is the one we lost when COVID shut everything down. We will be in the same suite category, but now on Deck 8. So, Waitress of the Seas? Here is the story. Two weeks ago, The Boss and I spent the weekend in NYC for some time away from the kids, and finally got the chance to see Phantom Of The Opera on Broadway before it closes its doors for good. As would be expected, the show was amazing, and our little trip was a nice little get away. While we were gone, the kids were staying with my parents. While there, they were asking Johnny all about the cruise etc. He told them the name of the ship, and my father, who is a little hard of hearing at this point in his life thought he heard "Waitress of the Seas" and instead of trying to get clarification, just went with it, and thought, "huh, what an odd name for a cruise ship." It wasn't until we picked the kids up did the mistake get cleared up. For me, the name stuck, and she shall forever now be known as Waitress of the Seas to me. Now that that is cleared up, back to the usuals. Whos Going: Its our typical crew, myself, The Boss (Heather) D13 Lydia, D9 Johnny, and my sister Julie. We all have a great time together and my sister likes to call herself our third adopted child since we include her in many of our adventures. Route: Eastern Caribbean. We are visiting Labadee, Puerto Rico, St Thomas and PDCC. All of these are new ports for us except for PDCC so we are excited about that. Stateroom: We are in an ATS2BR as before, but this time we are on deck 8. We were on deck 9 last year, and we would have been perfectly happy there again, but the price difference to move to the bigger suite was so small that it was a no brainer to go bigger. I can thank @Lovetocruise2002 for letting me know that the itineraries were going live and introducing me to her amazing TA, IYKYK!! Pre-Cruise Purchases: As we are all painfully aware of, cruise planner prices are going way up especially for vacation week cruises, so I have been watching prices like a hawk. We were able to get a good price on the things we wanted to do. Other prices were so crazy we quickly passed on. IE Coco Beach club passes were over $200pp and the OTW cabanas were nearly 3k. As much as we loved that last experience last year, that is way more than what we paid then, and I don't see the value for that price. With the kids being older and less inclined to just play in the sand, we did book a Thrill Water Park Cabana though. The kids are old enough now that its easier to say go have fun while I lounge in the cabana, but not old enough where I don't have to be in the water park with them. Labadee we were able to get dragon tail coaster rides and the inflatable park passes for quite cheap. In a big stroke of luck, the beach cabanas at barefoot beach actually dropped in price significantly so I was able to snag one of those. We had originally planned on just getting beach chairs because they were in the "ousands" of dollars at first. Maybe there was another new intern because the price dropped to $400 for a brief time and I snagged one. Puerto Rico we are just going to get off the ship and wander around old town and find something to eat and explore a bit. St Thomas we booked the Champagne Catamaran Sail and Snorkel excursion through RC. Julie, Lydia and I will snorkel. The Boss will enjoy the Champagne and Snacks, and I'm sure Johnny will be in charge of the boat by the end of the day. More to Come!

Sex on the beach is good, but you have to watch out for sand in places........oh wait......thats not what we are talking about here is it?

Yep, I need space, and escape routes too(side effect of my job)! Pretty sure the boss would divorce me if I tried to book her in an interior room

While I have yet to experience #teamDeck17, I too can fully vouch for the Anthem aft lofts, as long as the neighbours (neighbors?) are good ones! If I'm able to sail star class on Anthem again, that's exactly where I would be! They really are spectacular. We also had lunch in coastal on embarkation day. It was convenient and the food was good. I don't think I am alone in my assessment that Anthem has the best CK.

Our last time in Roatan we did the zip lines. We had lots of fun. My kids had a blast. FYI, I think the zip line crew may not be Victor Bodden employees because they game hard for tips, which is against their policy in the FAQ section. They do take tons of pictures for you and the price for the pictures wasn't bad if I remember correctly. If you end up at a beach in the later part of the day, I do know the drivers communicate with each other to try to spread out crowds and find one that isn't as crowded. Our first time there, we ended up skipping the beach and went back to the empty ship because of this. Have a great time!

Costa Maya - Got to Maya Chan!! My kids loved it there, and its great for adults too. For Roatan, book Victor Bodden and do their best of Roatan private tour. We have used them multiple times. We've held sloths, monkeys etc. They have a great zipline course. Went to a chocolate factory. The options are endless, and their prices are great.